


pretty glad that you're alone

by jdphoenix



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Season/Series 05, past Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-05
Updated: 2020-07-05
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:40:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25098541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: Two years since rejoining the team, Grant's still the villain. Sometimes that means he's their resident annoyance. Sometimes it means doing the things no one else will.
Relationships: Jemma Simmons/Grant Ward
Comments: 7
Kudos: 76





	pretty glad that you're alone

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Halsey's "bad guy."

The door’s open but, as the only person in the lab has her back to him, Grant taps twice on the door frame before he enters. Simmons must be deep in her work because the sound makes her jump.

“Ward,” she says between heaving breaths. The hand pressed to her heart drops to her side but there’s still a little bit of fear lingering around her eyes. “I thought you were someone else.”

An incredulous _Who?_ sits on the tip of his tongue.

The initial reaction, that made sense. Two years since he rejoined the team—give or take, time’s gotten kind of relative around here lately—and he’s still persona non grata. Not that he’s made much of an effort to ingratiate himself; until recently he was as much a prisoner as an ally and the only reason they kept him around was to keep him from hunting down Morse and Hunter.

Actually, that might still be the reason.

The point is, he’s got no friends around here and Simmons has made it clear she hates him more than any of them. If there’s anyone on base who she’d be _less_ happy to see, it’s news to him. So why does she seem almost relieved?

He doesn’t ask. That’s the kind of thing a friend would do, someone who _cares_ , and he’s not that. Instead he holds out his wrist.

“I was hoping you could help me with this.”

She blinks at the metric like she’s never seen one before then up at him with an equally confused expression. “Why haven’t you had this removed?”

He opens his palm in a gesture to indicate that’s _exactly_ what he’s doing.

She purses her lips. “I _meant_ why haven’t you had it done before now. You’ve been back for weeks, haven’t you?”

The irritation is familiar. He likes less the uncertainty she ends with.

Simmons was the last to return from the future. They were all taken—in ones or twos from the field over the course of a month—and sent into a hellish future because … somehow seeing it is gonna help them fix it? Grant’s no scientist, but he’s pretty sure, based purely on the movies he’s been forced to watch by these losers, the second they interacted with that future they cemented it.

Regardless, Fitz managed to find a way to bring them all back but it wasn’t easy. Grant only saw him make two trips after he returned. The first—to get May and Coulson—was so rough the machine broke and he spent the better part of a month rebuilding it. It’s a good thing after that it was only Simmons left because the next trip nearly brought the base crashing down on all their heads. (And because Grant’s really not sure Fitz would’ve bothered with the rest of them once he had her, but he’s keeping that opinion to himself.)

Grant’s not up on the details—he wasn’t invited to the share session that followed Simmons’ return and didn’t want to be—but he can’t imagine it was a walk in the park for her. That world he saw was bad enough. Add another decade or two _plus_ the trauma of another monolith trip? Frankly it’s a wonder Simmons isn’t in a straitjacket right now.

“Yeah,” he says, drawing the word out, “but I’m not about to let any of these SHIELD medics go stabbing around in my arm. I need it for killing people.”

That uncertainty disappears, replaced by a mix of confusion and frustration, in the face of which he can’t help but smile innocently.

“You-” She pulls back, apparently thinking better of that beginning. “Those medics have already removed metrics from several of the others. That should be sufficient practice for you to trust their experience.”

Grant rolls his eyes. “That still doesn’t erase the fact they’re _SHIELD_ and would all be happy to accidentally sever the traitor’s artery.”

“I’m SHIELD,” she says dryly. “And I swore to kill you. I nearly did!”

He holds up a finger. “You killed Bakshi. A glorified bureaucrat not in his right mind. That’s not even close to ‘nearly’ killing me.”

“He was _shielding you_.”

Grant shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter.”

“It absolutely- Ugh!” She spins like she can’t even stand to look at him anymore. Their argument’s brought them so close he has to pull back to avoid getting smacked by her ponytail.

He chuckles. These last couple years, he’s made a sort of game out of irritating the team. Most of them have built up an immunity to his antics, but not Simmons. She’s always good for a laugh when toeing the straight-and-narrow gets to be too much.

But his fun for today is over. He doesn’t hear May—she’s too good for that—but he knows she’s in the doorway, watching and judging and probably plotting his murder, before she even clears her throat.

Simmons doesn’t have any of his situational awareness and jumps again. This time her hand goes to her ear, almost like the soft sound was too loud for her or something. Weird.

Before Grant can wonder over that for too long, May says, “Coulson wants to see you. Ward.” She adds that last because Simmons is pointing between them, confused. “He wants to ask you about the general you met.”

Grant rolls his eyes. “I already told him everything. Including that he wasn’t a general, he just called himself one.” They all landed in different points in the future timeline and Coulson’s convinced the secret to stopping the tragedy that destroyed the world is in the details they picked up. Maybe it is, but Grant’s getting real tired of going over the minutiae.

“Coulson thinks he might be the same Inhuman Mack and Elena met. He wants you to compare notes.”

Great. A group project.

He shoots Simmons an expectant look. “You gonna help me or am I gonna live with this thing?”

She rolls her eyes but says, “I’ll ask Dr. Keller about the procedure tonight. Come see me about it before breakfast tomorrow?”

“See you then.”

May gives him one of her unreadable looks when he joins her in the hall.

“What?”

Her answer is a slightly more judgy but still unreadable look. Probably thinking he’s up to something nefarious where Simmons is concerned.

“Whatever,” he sighs and follows her.

\-----

Simmons tightens the strap around his elbow until he nearly loses feeling in his fingers.

“Careful,” Grant says. “Are you planning on removing the metric or my whole hand?”

“When Dr. Keller performed this surgery he put his patients to sleep just to be safe. Given your fear of SHIELD agents-”

“I am not afraid,” he says quickly. “I’m reasonably cautious.”

Simmons ignores him. “I figured you would prefer to remain awake, so I’ll be using a local anesthetic. There will be less chance of any severed arteries if you can’t move inadvertently.”

Fair enough.

“Shouldn’t it be the other side up though?” he asks. The metric _is_ on the other side of his arm.

“No. According to Dr. Keller, the reason it can’t be easily removed is that it includes a clamp that’s wrapped around your ulna. Once that’s removed, only suction will keep the metric in.”

That explains the tape she slapped over it when he first came in.

She continues her preparations—a quick shave and a swab of alcohol—and Grant notes the faint curve of her lips.

“That better not be poison,” he says as she lines up the needle.

She jams it in. “I thought I was the only medic you trusted,” she says, voice dripping innocence.

“Ah, no. Not trusting _them_ doesn’t mean I trust _you_.”

“It will take a minute for the anesthetic to take effect.” She sits on the stool opposite him and taps his palm with her fingers. “Tell me when you stop feeling that. You never did enlighten me as to why I’m your first choice for this.”

He shrugs his free shoulder. “Not a big deal. I know you.”

“You know me? You mean you know I won’t harm you?”

He looks at their hands. He can still feel her. _Tap. Tap. Tap._

“They don’t trust me. No one around here does. You do.”

Her laugh is a sharp crack in the quiet lab. “What made you think I _trust_ you?”

The obvious answer to that is the Framework. But he doesn’t really want to get into that right now. Or ever.

“When the LMDs got everyone else,” he says, figuring it’s the safer topic, “you trusted me to get you out of the base.”

Simmons’ smile fades as she remembers that day. She was scared—scared enough to trust _him—_ and in pretty bad shape. No surprise her eyes drop to the table.

“I hardly had a choice,” she murmurs.

“Fair enough,” he allows. “But you did it. I figured, if nothing else, this is payback.”

Her forehead crinkles. “This? Not-” She shakes herself, question unspoken. The smile she pastes on is as fake as he is. “I suppose it was a horrible shock, finding out you weren’t truly stranded in the future and you had to return to repay your debt of trust.”

“I would’ve said _you_ owed _me_ for getting you out safe.”

“Of course you would have.”

He doesn’t like that look she’s got on. It’s too soft, not the sort of thing that belongs between him and any of the team, but especially not her.

He adjusts his shoulder, which requires some awkward shifting of his whole body.

“I can’t feel that.” Her hand is resting on his, the tapping forgotten while they’ve been talking. She snatches it back like she suddenly realized he’s burning hot.

“Oh! Right. Yes. Better hurry before that wears off.” She gets to work. Gloves and mask—for him too; without anyone else here, he’ll have to assist on his own surgery—and in no time sets scalpel to flesh.

It’s far from the first time he’s seen himself cut into—the pain killers make for a nice change of pace though—and he winds up watching her instead of the surgery. The way her eyebrows draw together in concentration and her eyes light up when she sees what she’s looking for and that smile that lifts her cheeks when she shows him the severed piece of metal that was holding the metric in.

“That’s it?” he asks.

“Well, as the only way to get it off would’ve been for this to go through your bone, yes, it is.”

While she sews him up, she warns him that she’ll have to sew up the other side too and to be careful while his insides fill in the empty space and to watch for signs of infection and basically all the stuff he was hoping to avoid by going to someone who’s not even a real medic. But it’s Simmons so he should’ve known better.

She really must’ve studied Keller’s notes. The whole thing only takes a few minutes and then she’s releasing the strap on his arm and smiling at his hiss of pain. That anesthetic is wearing off fast. She squeezes his fingers a little to help the blood flow and then replaces her gloves.

“I’ll still have to remove the metric itself and bandage your wrist, so don’t wuss out on me now.”

Watching her, he realizes something’s missing from this picture.

“You didn’t have one?” he asks. She’s only been back a few days. If she had a metric to be removed, there should be a bandage or at least some stitches. But there’s not a mark on her.

“No, I had something else.” She bends over his arm, her gentle technique as she removes the metric at odds with her tone. “I attracted the attention of the Kree in charge of the Lighthouse. He decided to keep me in his service and, as he valued aesthetics in his personal slaves, he didn’t employ metrics for them.” She tries to tip her head casually to one side but it comes off more as a flinch. “He used a device which interfered with the temporal and occipital lobes of the brain.”

“Ouch.”

“Quite.”

“How’d you get it out?” he asks and immediately feels like an idiot. Here he is, making her remove _his_ invasive alien implant and hers is probably stuck in there forever. “Or did you?”

She’s moved on to the stitches by now. She’s done a million of them—mostly on him—and could probably do them in her sleep. She stills, needle poised above his skin like she can’t trust herself to make the next move.

“Fitz did,” she says and drives the needle in.

Grant frowns down at her bent head. Fitz is an _engineer_. He’s smart, but he’s about a million miles away from brain surgeon when it comes to skill and experience.

Or the Fitz he’s always known is. The Fitz from the Framework, he dabbled in surgery, didn’t he? Grant knows he got his hands dirty with the torture at least, and that’s more experience with physiology than he ever had in this life.

“What’d he do?”

Simmons stops in the process of reaching for the gauze, her wide eyes fixing on him like he’s a predator she somehow didn’t notice until just now. She steps back, tearing off her gloves so she can hug her arms across her chest. “Nothing. He- he just removed it.” 

“How?”

“What do you mean _how_?”

“It was in your _brain_ , Simmons. Generally things don’t just fall out of people’s skulls.”

She shakes her head with a bitter smile that says he’s the biggest idiot on the planet. “When we were escaping, I discovered _why_ none of the other slaves bothered to try. The device caused pain. _Crippling_ pain. Fitz removed it. End of story.”

“What? Did he reach in through your ear and yank it out?”

He means it as a ridiculous dig to get her to confess the real answer. He doesn’t expect her to look away in shame.

The breath whooshes out of Grant in an empty laugh. “ _Wow._ ”

At least now he knows why she’s so jumpy. Turns out there _is_ someone on base she’s got more reason to fear than him. Who knew?

Simmons seems to realize she’s said too much. Probably she has. He can’t imagine Coulson or May have heard so much of this story. “If he hadn’t, I never would have made it out of there.”

“Maybe. You really don’t know for sure though, do you?”

She stares at him for a long moment. He blanks his face. The anger he’s feeling isn’t for her, not really, no reason to scare her with it any more than he already has.

Still, she seems to see … something. Or maybe nothing. He can’t be sure. Whatever she sees, she asks, “Why do you care?”

“I don’t,” he says readily. The team care. They’re the ones who let Simmons hide inside her own skin and pretend nothing happened to her because they’ve all been living in this weird state of collective denial ever since the Framework. It’s their coping mechanism of choice and if Simmons wants to take part, they’re happy to let her. Grant’s the only asshole around here who won’t leave well enough alone. “I just- I remember.”

He’s the only one who does. He was the only one who saw what Fitz left of her in the Framework.

He lets his eyes elaborate for him, seeking out all every cut and bruise still burned into his memory. If that Kree valued aesthetic beauty, he never would’ve looked twice at Simmons if she’d carried those scars into the real world.

She squirms under his gaze and grabs at the gauze again, this time to throw it at his chest. “Wrap your own wrist.”

“Simmons-”

It’s just as well she keeps going, he didn’t really have anything to add to that.

And why should he? It’s not like they’re friends.

He saved her life a couple of times. A virtual version of him held a virtual version of her while she cried. And now he’s pissed her off by questioning her ex-boyfriend’s hero credentials.

Maybe that’s what’s got her so annoyed. Maybe, after Fitz saved her in the future, she’s been thinking she owes him a second shot just like she owed Grant for saving her. She’s probably been trying to forget what he did to her so she could make a go of things and here Grant is fucking it all up for her.

He’s not sorry. He probably should be, experience has taught him his idea of what to do and the right thing to do are worlds apart. If it were anyone else on the team who’d seen what he did in the Framework, they’d probably encourage her to move past it. But he’s the bad guy, here to piss everyone off.

A sharp pain slashes through his wrist. He’s wraped the gauze too tightly.

Damn Fitz. Damn Simmons. Damn Coulson for forcing him back on the team. Days like this he almost wishes he had gotten TAHITI’d.

And it’s not getting any better because just when he’s got the gauze straightened out to start over, someone barrels into the lab.

“ _What did you do?_ ” Fitz demands. He marches right up to him, bringing them toe-to-toe so he can glare up at him like he’s anything approaching a threat. “I just saw Simmons out in the hall. She’s upset. What did you do to her, Ward?”

Grant lets out a long breath and sets the gauze aside. “I could ask you the same.”

“What’s _that_ supposed to mean?”

Grant holds his stare. His blood is pounding in his ears like he just touched the berserker staff. All that anger he pushed down because it wasn’t meant for Simmons is rising back up now the focus of it is in the room. He can’t afford to let it rule him. When he’s sure he has a handle on it, he says, “The Framework.”

Now Fitz steps back. And good thing. Grant doesn’t know what he’d do if he’d stayed within easy reach.

“When I pulled Simmons out of Hydra, she’d been tortured. Are you gonna tell me you had nothing to do with that?”

“I- I was _in charge_ , that doesn’t mean I took part-”

“It’s a yes or no question, Fitz. Did. You. Torture. Simmons.”

Fitz is pale, his eyes wide and mouth gaping like a fish. Grant scoffs.

“Yeah. That’s what I thought.”

“It wasn’t me. We were brainwashed-”

“Don’t you dare.” Grant has to focus to loosen the fists that have formed at his sides. “You have _no idea_ what brainwashing is. You had a different life experience, that’s all. Your choices were your own.”

“No.”

“ _Yes._ ” Grant lets the word hang for long seconds, watching Fitz closely to make sure he’s hearing him.

The trouble with geniuses is they like to think just because they might be smarter than everyone else in the room, they know better than everyone else. He needs to know this is penetrating Fitz’s thick skull.

When he’s sure it has, he finally lets himself step forward. Fitz’s acceptance has cooled some of his anger, enough he can trust himself to get close for this next part.

“You’re gonna stay away from her. She makes the first move, that’s fine. But until then, you keep your distance.”

Apparently Fitz’s guilt isn’t quite enough to match his fear at the idea of losing Simmons. “Or what?” he demands, brave again. Always the hero chasing after the girl. Grant got sick of that role a long time ago. “You’ll kill me?”

It’s been years since he was any real threat to the team. Longer since May made her very detailed and public promise of just what he’d suffer if he violated the terms of his release from the vault and hurt any SHIELD agent.

“Yes,” Grant says.

Message delivered, he snatches up the gauze and leaves. But not before Fitz gets one last dig in.

“You weren’t brainwashed either. With Agent 33.”

It’s a good thing he waited until Grant was all but in the hall to say it, otherwise he might kill him here and now.

He flexes his hands, thinks of a dozen ways to make Fitz beg for death, then releases the tension, willing it away the same way he would if he were in the middle of an op. He’ll express his feelings later. Maybe Daisy will bring back a prisoner in need of a nice, long interrogation. That’ll be nice.

He turns, careful not to move so much as an inch closer to Fitz. “No,” he says, “I wasn’t. But you kinda just made my point for me right there, didn’t you?”

He walks out before Fitz can respond. If he doesn’t, there really will be a murder here today.

Three steps from the door, he senses another presence. Around the next corner is Simmons. She’s pale but there’s color rising in her cheeks. He doesn’t need to ask if she could hear the conversation in there.

She steps forward, on the verge of saying something.

A thanks? A lie that she doesn’t need his protection? An insult?

He keeps walking. He’s not her savior or her friend, but if he hears what she has to say, he might have to stop being her enemy. He doesn’t know how to be anything else.


End file.
